For one reason or another the Fifth-Avenue Theatre
was but half filled last night, when Miss Mary Anderson appeared there
as Galatea in Gilbert's play "Pygmalion and Galatea." It should be
remembered, however, that the audiences at this theatre do not
represent that illustrious and triumphant "dead-headism" which has
been, during several years, a flagrant wrong against the stage. The
practice of filling theatres with people who do not pay for their
places, who belong to the amiable phalanx of "dead-heads," has been
found a dangerous practice, and managers who are just and right-minded
- like the present manager of the Fifth-Avenue Theatre - have protested
vigiriusly against the practice, and have sought to do away with it.
Some of the largest and most brilliant audiences which have assembled
from time to time in respectable play-houses have been companies of men
and women who are more delightful than profitable. The value of an
audience, therefore, is not always to be measured by its numbers. Miss
Anderson's programme was, at least, thoroughly engoyed last evening,
and it was frequently applauded. If it was not enthusiastically
applaused it was worth something close upon enthusiasm.
Mr. Gilbert, who is inevitably a humorist, has, one
must own, put a great deal of truth and humanity into his "Pygmalion
and Galatea." The play is, from one side, harshly and aggressively
disagreeable. Its characters are low, vulgar, and selfish. Pygmalion -
anantique poetic conception - is reduced here to snobbishness and
priggishness. His sister, his wife, his kinsmen, and his friends are
insufferable. But, though insufferable, they are not especially
untruthful. Those who try to portray life are brought to the sad work
of picturing absurd, weak and sordid personalitles. Men, as we know
them, are not ideals. They are rather caricatures of ideals. Mr.
Gilbert, who has bright satiric force, does not hesitate to put his
sting into them - and his purpose is admirably praiseworthy. In several
of his plays he is labored and fantastic; in "Pygmalion and Galatea,"
it seems to us, he presents the pathos of idealism in a very effective
manner, contrasting it grimly and cynically with frank reality. Galatea
is the spirit of sweet, ingenuous, aspiring womanhood; she is ushered
into a world of bitterness, jealousy, vulgarity; she loves her maker,
who is a narrow-hearted and fatuous sculptor; she meets those who prove
to her that life is a thing of sorrow. At the end, forlorn and broken
in soul, she returns to her pedestal, utters her melancholy farewell to
the world, and becomes again a statue. The satire in a play like this
is, of course, rather darkly drawn. The contrast between the innocent
Galatea and the selfish Pygmalion is painful, mournful. But is the
contrast, is the satire, under-true? There is nothing so beautiful, so
bewildering, as the potency of life. It is astonishing, a posteriori, that life is as
small, as unsatisfactory, as it is. "Pygmalion and Galatea" has, in
consequence, a depth which it may not appear to have at first sight. It
is a trifle on the surface - a jest aimed at our dull human affairs.
But the plot has a barbed point. It is well not to overlook this fact.
As to Miss Anderson's performance of Galatea, we can only repeat what
was said of it last year, and repeat this with emphasis: the
performance is strong and beautiful, intelligently conceived, and
executed with a certain sculpturesque directness, breadth, simplicity,
which charms the fancy. Miss Anderson is seen in no character more
pleasantly than in Galatea. The stateliness, the ingenuousness, and the
enthusiasm of the character find in her a sympathetic interpreter. She
gives a ringing voice to its eloquent longing, a charming tenderness to
its innocence, a mournful cadence to its lamentation. The sincerity and
the sweetness of her acting in this character are perfectly genuine.
The cast last evening was tolerable. On Thursday evening Miss Anderson
will appear as Julia in "The Hunchback." In the meantime Mr. Gilbert's
interesting play will be repeated.